Finding Her Dad

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Prindle didn’t like him. The feeling was mutual. Jon didn’t hold out a hand. After a moment the other man stood, too. “You’ve gone too far,” he said. “Are you afraid voters will think you’re colluding to excuse a deputy’s malfeasance if you don’t come down hard enough on Deputy Chen? Whatever the truth of the incident?”

  Jon didn’t allow his expression to change. “The election has nothing to do with this. Chen screwed up. I don’t know how badly yet. When I do, I’ll make a decision. I can tell you this. It’s to his benefit for me not to make that decision prematurely. You’re not doing him any favors, Prindle.”

  “You’ll be hearing from us,” the union rep said. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the office.

  Jon swung away to gaze out the window. On a clear day he had a glimpse of Mount Rainier from here. Today the mountain was wrapped in puffy clouds.

  He was pissed off enough to mutter a couple of obscenities. At the very least, the young deputy had been hotdogging. At worst, he’d been criminally careless. No one had died in the incident that had resulted in his suspension, but that wasn’t thanks to him. Right now Jon was inclined to fire him, but there might turn out to be extenuating circumstances. And Chen was, while not a rookie, far from seasoned.

  After a minute Jon rubbed the back of his neck and turned to his desk. There was a name on his calendar for three o’clock—Sierra Lind. A high-school kid, apparently. Something about the school newspaper. Which was strange in August, when school wasn’t in session. Probably she was an eager beaver who wanted to have an article on the election ready for the first issue. Jon didn’t have time for this kind of thing and he wasn’t in the mood right now, but it wasn’t optional. Community relations were too important.

  Election or no election.

  He touched the button on his intercom and said, “Dinah, is my next appointment here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Send her in, please.”

  He walked around the desk as the door opened. Two people entered, a girl and a woman. The girl caught his eye first, thanks to hair dyed a ridiculous color and a bunch of piercings. Nothing unusual there, but a shame all the same. She’d be prettier without metal impaled on her face. Unusually tall for a girl, maybe five foot ten or eleven, she was skinny and long legged. Had long arms, too, that hung awkwardly as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Blue eyes, strangely intense.

  The woman who came in behind her didn’t look like any relation. The teacher in charge of the school newspaper, maybe? She was a good six inches or more shorter, with long wavy black hair, chocolate-brown eyes and a curvaceous figure. Plump by modern standards. Just right by his, he couldn’t help thinking, even though lusting after random visitors to his office wasn’t exactly appropriate.

  Both of them were looking him over with unusual gravity. The girl seemed nervous, maybe even a little scared. The woman was wary, edging into hostile.

  What the hell? he asked himself, even as he held out a hand to the girl, who was in the lead. “Welcome. I’m Captain Brenner. Are you Sierra Lind?”

  “Yes.” Her voice squeaked, and she flushed. “Yes,” she repeated. She looked from his hand to his face and then back again before tentatively reaching out.

  They shook, her long, slender fingers icy enough that he glanced down in surprise.

  She retrieved her hand, and he smiled at the woman. “And you are…?”

  “Lucia Malone.” Her voice was pleasantly husky. It didn’t go with a persona that seemed to bristle. “I’m Sierra’s foster mother. And chauffeur.”

  “Ah.” He wanted to shake her hand, too, but she was gripping a large purse fiercely enough he had a feeling she might ignore his hand if he proffered it. Instead, he gestured toward the seating area separated from his desk by only a few feet. “Please.”

  They sidled that way, not taking their eyes from him. Rather like a cautious doe and fawn unsure whether the other visitor to the water hole was a predator or not. Ruefully amused, he stayed where he was until they’d sat side by side. Then he chose a seat on the far side of the coffee table. No point in panicking them.

  His gaze wanted to linger on Lucia Malone’s pretty face. Her first name, brown eyes and black hair suggested that she had Hispanic blood.

  He dragged his attention to the teenager. She was the one who’d made the appointment.

  “What can I do for you, Sierra?” he asked.

  She gulped, then cast a panicky look at her foster mother. When she looked back at him, he thought idly that her eyes were as blue as his. They were several shades lighter than her hair dye.

  In a rush she said, “I’m not really here to do an article for my school newspaper.” When he didn’t say anything immediately, she hurried on. “That’s what I said when I called. Because I thought then they’d let me in to see you.”

  Feeling considerably more cautious now, he studied her. “All right. Why did you want to talk to me?”

  She gnawed on her lower lip. After a moment Ms. Malone reached out and squeezed one of her hands. Jon’s gaze dropped to those clasped hands, one small and competent and warm skinned, the other very white and longer fingered. And yet, from the way those two hands clung, he could feel a connection beyond the physical. Reassurance. Love.

  He met the girl’s eyes again and waited.

  “The thing is,” she said, so fast the words tumbled over each other, “I think you’re my father.”

  He stared. Either she was delusional or his recurring nightmare had just become real. He couldn’t seem to think. To figure how old she was. Whether she could be… But, goddamn it, how would she have found him?

  The silence stretched, became painful.

  “I know you may not want anything to do with me,” she said hurriedly, “and that’s okay. Really. I just, well, wanted to meet you. And see.”

  He cleared his throat. “To say you’ve taken me by surprise is an understatement. Forgive me, but…do I know your mother?”

  She shook her head. “No. Mom is— She died.” The girl—Sierra—sucked in a huge breath. “Mom went to a sperm bank.”

  God help him.

  Voice hoarse, he said, “How old are you?”

  “I’m sixteen. I turned sixteen in July.” She paused. “I’ll be a junior this year.”

  Sixteen. Jon had quit breathing. Sixteen years ago he was a senior in college. Oh, damn.

  He could feel the foster mother watching him. He didn’t let himself look at her.

  “What makes you think I’m your father?” he said finally.

  “I compared DNA in a whole bunch of databases. I came up with a partial match. To a Linda Brenner. Then I did some research and found out she had one son, who was the right age.”

  “Me,” he said slowly.

  Her head bobbed.

  His mother had become obsessed with tracing her family heritage, lord knows why. He did vaguely recall she’d sent off a DNA sample at one point. Jon had argued against it; once something like that was out there, you lost a piece of your privacy. She’d laughed and said, “What do I have to hide? The only people I’m likely to hear from are relatives. Imagine finding cousins I didn’t know I had.”

  Imagine, he thought grimly, finding a granddaughter you didn’t know you had.

  He cursed. Lucia Malone gave him a reproving look.

  “You did this on a whim,” he said to the girl.

  Her teeth closed on her lower lip again. Her eyes slid from his, then came shyly back. “It was after Mom died that I thought…” She gave a little shrug. Her shoulders stayed slightly hunched after that, as if she were braced for a blow.

  When she didn’t say any more, he did look at Ms. Malone. “She doesn’t have any other family?”

  “An uncle in New Mexico.” Her voice was repressive. “He wasn’t able to take Sierra.”

  Jon couldn’t remember the last time he’d been staggered like this. He didn’t know what to think. There was supposed to be no way he could ever be traced
. DNA testing had been around, but in its relative infancy. The idea of partial matches, of people casually sending off spit so they could track down unknown relatives, had been unimaginable.

  No longer.

  He made himself study the girl and immediately thought, hell. Her eyes were the same color as his, an unusually crystalline, pale blue. Her hair…well, who knew? No, that wasn’t true. Her eyebrows were light brown. Which meant she was likely a blonde. He’d been blond as a kid, but by his twenties his hair had darkened to a medium brown that bleached easily in the sun. This summer, between work and politicking he hadn’t gotten outside enough for that to happen.

  He was tall—six foot three. His sister was five-ten. Fine boned like this girl, too. The nose and Cupid-doll mouth weren’t his, but the shape of her face…yeah, she could have gotten that from him.

  Desperately he wondered what the voters would think of this. Was there any way to keep Rinnert from finding out about Sierra? He had a horrifying vision of what his opponent could make of the stunning appearance of an unknown daughter.

  “Do you have any proof at all,” he said, his voice harder than he intended, “or did you pick me out of the phone book?”

  Lucia Malone let go of her foster daughter’s hand—he hadn’t noticed until now that she’d continued to hold it in silent reassurance—to pluck a file folder from her capacious bag. She glared at him as she handed it over.

  He opened it and took a quick glance, barely keeping himself from swearing aloud again. He’d seen enough DNA typing on the job to know he was screwed.

  He closed the folder. “I’ll need to study this.”

  Ms. Malone’s eyes narrowed. “You did donate sperm, didn’t you? Or you’d have kicked us out by now.”

  His jaw muscles flexed. “I don’t have to answer that question.”

  They stared at each other, her expression angry and contemptuous. At last she stood.

  “Sierra, I think it’s time we go.” Her voice was astonishingly gentle, considering the way she was vibrating with outrage. “We’ve put Captain Brenner on the spot. I think it’s fair to give him time to think.”

  “Oh.” The girl scrambled to her feet. Her cheeks were flaming red. “Yeah. Sure.” She didn’t want to meet his eyes anymore. “My phone number’s in there if you want…. But if you don’t, that’s okay. I really didn’t mean…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t mean…”

  Oh, hell, she was going to cry. He almost groaned.

  But she pulled herself together and looked at him with sudden dignity that gave him an odd, burning sensation beneath his breastbone. “Thank you for your time, Captain Brenner. I’m sorry if this felt like I was attacking you or something. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” Then she inclined her head, as regal as a princess, and walked beside her foster mother to his door. She carried herself proudly, and he felt like scum.

  “Sierra.” His voice emerged rough.

  She paused without turning. Ms. Malone did.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  The lips that had spoken so softly to the girl tightened. Ms. Malone nodded, and the two of them left, carefully closing the office door behind them.

  He didn’t move; just stood there, stunned, and saw his chances of becoming sheriff implode. And knew he was a son of a bitch to even let that cross his mind after looking into the eyes of a girl tossed into the foster-care system because she had no family who wanted her—a girl, he had no doubt, who was his daughter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JON DIDN’T KNOW how he got through the day. He had several other appointments, and had to attend a potluck dinner at a seniors’ center and then, later in the evening, a volunteer fair at a community center. The brief talks he gave to the seniors and the volunteers came by rote, for which he was grateful. He was getting good at running for office, which these days seemed to matter more than whether he’d be an effective sheriff. He could tell his tough-on-crime stance went over better with the old folks than it did with the activist kinds at the fair. They were inclined to be softhearted. He found their suspicion of him ironic, considering his core belief was that every person should take responsibility for his or her own actions. He believed in a kind of morality that was very personal. Wasn’t it that same sense of morality, a need to take responsibility, that had driven all of them to give of their precious time to some cause?

  The whole time he talked, listened, smiled, shook hands, he felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. He would have sworn he was standing outside himself watching critically.

  Knowing the guy he watched was a hypocrite.

  He argued for a morality that should govern every choice a person made, a sense of responsibility that wouldn’t let you look away when it was convenient to do so.

  Responsibility. Now, that was funny, coming from a man who’d sold his sperm. Who might have a whole bunch of unacknowledged kids out there. Kids who were deeply wanted, he’d told himself back when he was twenty-one and saw the sperm donation as a quick and easy way to bring in bucks. He was doing the world a favor. After all, he was healthy, smart, athletic; he carried no genetic booby traps of which he was aware. What was wrong with helping women have babies, if their husbands were sterile or they’d chosen to go the single-parent route?

  He’d returned to the clinic two or three times, hating the sordid feel of the process itself. But he’d been working as many hours as he could and still keep his grades up, and yet struggled to pay his tuition and rent and buy food and books. He’d been damned if he would take a cent from his father. He would do anything not to have to surrender his pride enough to ask for help from his parents.

  He worked his butt off. And, when necessary, he’d sell sperm, and he’d sell blood. He had done both.

  Personal responsibility wasn’t the strong suit of twenty-one-year-old boys. He’d been blithe enough about jacking off and handing over the tube of milky liquid, until one day he was waiting for a bus near a medical clinic. A pregnant woman came out and sat on the bench near him. He remembered looking at her sidelong. He didn’t know how pregnant she was. She was round, but not waddling. Five or six months, maybe. No husband with her. He’d wondered a little disapprovingly why not. A pregnant woman shouldn’t have to wait for the bus. What if it was full and she had to stand? Or she got jostled and bumped hard against the sharp edge of the seats? There were punks who hassled lone women on buses. And then he’d thought, Oh, my God. She might not have a husband, or a boyfriend. She could be pregnant with my baby.

  He’d sat there in shock, trying not to stare but unable to help sneaking looks. Of course the kid she was carrying wasn’t his; that was stupid even to think. What were the odds? The sperm bank supplied fertility clinics all over the country and even abroad. Not just locally.

  But it could be.

  Man, that had given him cold chills. After that he’d stuck to donating blood when he was desperate. It wasn’t as if the money had been that fabulous. He pretended to himself he didn’t even notice the pregnant women who seemed to be everywhere.

  It was a couple of years before an obviously pregnant woman didn’t seem to light up like a neon sign to him, and before he succeeded in putting from his mind the fact that probably some of his sperm had been put to use, that at least a few babies had been born that were blood of his blood.

  And now, he thought as he stood outside himself and watched while he went through the motions of politicking, he’d met one of those children. Sierra Lind.

  The question was, what was he going to do about it? About her?

  Had she meant it when she said she didn’t expect anything? That she wouldn’t tell anyone he was her father if he didn’t want to acknowledge her?

  Maybe. He thought she did mean it now. Which wasn’t to say she wouldn’t change her mind.

  It would matter less later, once he’d won the election, if he could put her off.

  He felt cold-blooded even thinking that.

  Even if Sierra kept her mouth
shut, what about her foster mother? Ms. Malone had started dubious and moved right along to mad because all she could see was that he was hurting her precious chick’s feelings.

  And he had. Jon didn’t like to remember the wounded look in those blue eyes or the pride with which Sierra—his daughter—had carried herself when she assured him that he had no obligation to her. Sierra might even believe that she’d been operating on mere curiosity, that she had no secret wish for him to hold out his arms and gather her into the bosom of his family. But he knew better. She’d lost her mother, and her only other relative didn’t want her. She’d gone to extraordinary effort to find him. Of course she hoped, desperately, that he would feel an immediate bond. Curiosity to match hers.

  So…what did he feel?

  He had no idea.

  No surprise, even after having downed a shot of straight Scotch while watching the late-night news, that he couldn’t sleep.

  The day had been muggy enough that he’d left the ceiling fan running. He slept naked, the moving air cooling the sweat on his body. Lying on his back, arms crossed behind his head, he gazed at the pale square of moonlight that fell through the open window onto the bed. Most of him was in the dark, leaving only his knees, calves and feet exposed by that cool light.

  He wondered if she was able to sleep tonight. What had she felt, meeting him? Anything in particular? Had there been some sort of recognition, on a cellular level, or did she imagine there was? Was she lying awake right now, too, hungrily remembering his face or the pitch of his voice and the set of his shoulders, deciding which bits and pieces of him had been echoed in her by the genes that had imprinted her?

  He muttered a soft imprecation. Those long, skinny arms and legs… He’d gone through that phase. In middle school he’d taken to hunching and hunkering low in his chair, because he towered over everyone. He’d been ridiculously, embarrassingly skinny. PE was a nightmare for him, when he was required to wear shorts that exposed stick-thin legs. Jon smiled a little, thinking about the boy he’d been. A boy with size-thirteen feet that sometimes seemed to be only loosely attached to him. Getting interested in girls, and knowing he looked ridiculous to them.